Carcass Error Guide(by Bell)

Everything herein was collected from various
tutorial sights into one complete document. Much of this you will recognize. I want to
extend special thanks to those who have contributed to this document as well as the
original authors and all those kind and helpful people who responded on the various forums
and offered help to the community.

Thank god for the effort of these modelers otherwise none of this would be
possible. The rest was collected from various modeling forums and I want to extend special
thanks to those veterans who posted all the valuable information that contributed to this
document, the majority being from PsykOSith et. al.- you rock!!! If you see things here
you have authored, please contact me and I'll put your name in the credits. Thanks again
all!!

1.) Error Code 12!

It seems you have an invisible object in
the scene that is causing error code 12! Press H and you will see on top there is a blank
space, select this and delete it, now export, and it wont show error code 12

What I was thinking of was, there is a
list of applied modifiers on the right. Normally the modifier at the bottom is a editable
something (mesh or whatever). In this modifier are different types to check (vertex, line,
face). When you are in ex. vertex mode, to move them, in the modifier list right of every
modifier upwards are signs, for vertices are it dots. there should be none. that means
toggle off vertex mode in editable mesh. None should be active.

2.) Polygons Look Black

Some model parts may have moved, and
some (probably the same ones which have moved) have their normals inverted, i.e. the
polygons look black.

How come that when a model looks fine
in 3ds max that in game some body parts seem turned inside out. Is it because those are
body parts that I cloned and mirrored?

Note which bits are out of place. They are
that way because those bits have been either mirrored or scaled. Max remembers that
information, and that is what confuses the xsi exporter. So well have to get rid of
that extra information. Now open the version of your characters max file that you saved
before setting up the hierarchy. Select all the meshes, bolts and tags which were screwed
up. While theyre selected, go to the utilities tab (the tab with the hammer icon on
the menus to the right of the view ports) and press the reset xform
button. Then press the reset selected button which appears underneath it. If
you have a hierarchy in place, you see that some bits move out of place. This is because
they are linked to a mesh which has its xform reset, and this change is propagated
through the hierarchy chain. Now go to all the bits which were wrong. Go through them
separately. In each case, go to the stack. Now, if you want to save the weighting
youve done, and you do, select the skin modifier and drag it above the xform
modifier. Then right click the xform modifier in the stack and click on collapse
to ( NOT collapse all!) in the roll out. Do this for every object you reset the
xform for. Finally youll have to setup the hierarchy again. You did save a current
version right? And export the max file as root.xsi again.

If it looks like your textures are
inverted, it is probably due to mirrored objects in 3D studio max. When mirroring, scaling
or moving objects some mesh properties are changed without you even noticing. When you
mirror/move/scale or rotate a body part, ALWAYS apply a "reset X form" modifier
(before weighting if possible)...after you add it to your mesh you will see your normals
being flipped...i have no idea why this happens. Collapse the stack, select the faces and
hit "flip" so they face the right way.

When you clone a body part like for
instance an arm or leg, the material/skin on that cloned part gets inverted. In 3ds
max/GMax you sometimes don't notice this when the material that you've applied to that
body part is 2 sided. Before exporting your model to a root.xsi file turn the flag 2 sided
on all materials off. You should be able to spot which polygons aren't visible and those
need to be flipped. Select this body part, go to the Utilities tab, select Reset XForm and
the button Reset Selected below it. Then go to the stack (in the Modify tab) and right
click on the XForm modifier in the stack. Choose "Collapse to" in the rollout,
and there you go! Faces might still be inverted but you can flip those manually.

If the material in 3dsmax is not "2
sided" than you can see which polygons need to be flipped. If it's the whole model or
complete body parts thats only easier sicne then you can go into the polygon mode, select
everything and use the "flip" option in the polygon menu.

I still have some weighting issues
though. I am also having a problem with the left arm---the whole back side is missing! It
was deforming strangely before, but after reweighting it, the whole back side is gone! It
looks weird cause you can see the front side's textures from the back.

I had the same problem wiht my l_arm. The
texture on this mesh in game is inside the mesh not outside. It looks strange in game. Its
easy to fix, chose l_arm and go to face in the editable mesh modifier and activate that
mode. Select in that mode all faces of the l_arm. Then click on flip in the modifier
outroll of faces. The mesh should now look like in game before. In game it will be ok now.

3.) Bones.ccp Assertion failed In
file: 'BonesDef.cpp' line: 10042

4.)vertex no. xxx on
meshnameis not weighted

The main issues will have to do with
"vertex no. xxx on {meshname}is not weighted". Go back and move the pelvis
around; any vertex not moving will have to be weighted.

Here's a tip for those who have been
getting that delightfull assimilate error "vert x not weighted", and then have
trouble finding vert x on their complex mesh: select the mesh with the vertex (the
assimilate error msg will give you that) type "setVertSelection $ #(x)" in the
white box on the left hand bottom corner of your 3dsmax screen (the maxscript listener
box), replacing x with the vertex number, and press enter. That troublesome vertex is now
selected. Just to warn you if you havn't UVW mapped it yet, colapsing the mesh will
destroy the weighting.

I've had problems with bits of mine too,
generally I just select the submesh in question. Apply the skin modifier, switch verts on
in the filter, select all the verts, click "Reset selected verts" in the
"advance params" rollout then reweight it, shouldn't be too hard as 90% of the
droid should be 100% weighting to one bome or another.

But I can't finish it, as assimilate is
giving me trouble with vertex 102. I know it's weighted to the thoracic (the surrounding
faces are red, and it deforms correctly when moving the bone), yet still assimilate gives
me an error on that vertex, saying it's not weighted GRRR! I do hope someone can help me
out...it really sucks to have done all this work and then find out it's for nothing.

one easy way I find to see which vert is
not weighted: double click on the Pelvis bone to choose all bones in the mesh, then move
the mesh horizontally. All verts unassigned will remain in place. Remember to undo any
movements you make. This will easily show up for any verts you have not weighted,
especially if you move the mesh a fair distance sideways.

I'm just taking a guess here, this
happened to me before, make sure you hit the "remove isolated vertices" button,
maybe that's not the problem but you can try it.

5.) Hierarchy issues

6.) Too many vertexes/polygons on
{meshname}

I've come across that one too...it's kind
of self explanatory: you have a piece of geometry (one object, in this case the
"head" object) in your model which has more than 500 verts, which is too much
for the poor shader engine to handle which creates shadows, lights etc to show up on your
model. Just detach a piece of that object (the neck?...enough to reduce the vertex count
below 500, at any rate) as a new object (remember to reweight!), and hey, presto, problem
solved.

7.) Error: 6210

That seems to mean you have a mesh which
has not had the skin properly applied. I find you can apply a skin modifier, then apply an
edit mesh modifier to that same mesh afterwards and maintain the bone setup, so long as
you DO NOT delete any vertices. You can however detach polygons etc (ie... caps...) and
still have it work.

The 6210 means you have done something to
the model it does not like ie. delete or add vertices to a model after a skin modifier
etc. My recommendation is to go thru your model and try deleting parts you have recently
modified (ONLY TEMPORARILY!!!) then exporting your model. If you don't get the error
message say, after you delete the left hand, you know that its because of that item...

8.) Error, material
"d:/projects/xev player model/xev3hair.jpg" is fully-pathed, this should be
local-path only"

9.) The red stance swings aren't
right and the DFA doesn't work right. | Force powers problems with hand | Saber isn't held
right | Back Stab not working.

I don't know how to do it myself but i did
read somewhere that weighting bolt_r_hand to the rhand_tag will fix it.. hope that helps.
I had to manually move the tag in his hand and recompile every time to make saber and gun
holding perfect because the tag in kyle.xsi doesn't hold the saber properly for me.

I have a problem with the way my model
holds the saber. All the animations work fine, but the saber is tilted off to the right
45degrees. I have moved/rotated the hand bolts around and it makes no difference.

Use the stormtroopers root.xsi, its
perfect.

Fix: "bolt_r_hand" is weighted
only to the "rhang_tag_bone", the "rhang_tag_bone" is not part of any
hierarchy (you don't add this bone to any mesh)

For the left hand (to fix force powers
problems if you have any): "lhand_tag_bone" has no vertex assigned to it (but is
part of the hand hierarchy) and the "bolt_l_hand" is weighted only to the mc5
bone.

My recommendation: try to get a base, new
skeleton from kyle or otherwise's root.xsi file, with the skeleton unmoved or rotated,
along with a complete set of bolts, or just one bolt, the bolt_r_hand tag, and merge it
with the existing Max file you have, overwriting the existing one. Do not move the bolt,
rotating it or otherwise. Just import it, link it to the right hand, skin it to
rhang_tag_bone bone, and try that. With vader i had that issue, afterwards on exar and
other models, this method seemed to work nicely, fixing any saber errors, etc.

Thanks! I re-imported the hand bolts and
they're to high on the hand, but they work. I think the problem is you can't move them
after they've been linked. If I break the linkage before I move them then relink it
doesn't get skewed. Thanks again!

I noticed something strange while
playing with a few downloaded models in MP- the "mandalorian" models (Jenga,
Boba, and other bounty hunters) and the "MP Maul" models (with other Sith's) I
noticed that while in the quick stance, the backstab wont work, the saber points the wrong
way!! Just to make sure it wasn't my game weirding out on me, I switched back to one of
the in-game models and the backstab worked fine. Is this something I can fix or do the
creators of these models (don't know if this happens in any other models) have to patch
it? Thanks.

Its from weighting the bolt_r_hand to the
wrong bone. The correct bone to weight it to is r_hang_tag_bone. It has been answered and
dealt with before I think they released the new fixed versions of them awhile ago, it
would be nice however to see an updated or more in-depth "getting the model
ingame" tutorial. I'm thinking about making one soon that parlors a little more to
the milkshape modeler but uses3dsmzx for making the .xsi

10.) Bone is Missing

When I assimilate my model it keeps
saying a bone is missing, the lfemurX, and i looked at my model, and i see it right there,
in the left leg. So what is wrong with this, does any one know?

Open up your hierarchy window. Chances are
your node isn't connected.

One other thing to check for is if you've
accidentally applied any additional modifier on that bone by accident. I once accidentally
applied an edit mesh modifier on one of the bones and it kicked out the same exact error.

Pull open the root.xsi file for Kyle and
compare your models bone hierarchy and the one in the root.xsi file, you might have
accidentally unlinked that bone.

Also, sometimes if you get a "missing
bone..." it means that you've added that bone to a skin modifier when you shouldn't
have, just remove it and add a different bone.

Yeah, the lfemurX is one of the bones that
the game uses though. I suggested earlier about mistakenly adding an additional modifier
to that bone. I t won't compile the mesh if carcass doesn't recognize lfemurX as an actual
bone. Just delete the edit mesh modifier

If it gives you the error message
"cannot find bone X" then find bone X and remove any weights using it.

but now i get a new error..

rd_eff was not found

rd2_eff was not found

rd3_eff was not found

rd4_eff was not found

rd5_eff was not found

rarm_eff was not found

ld1_eff was not found

ld2_eff was not found

ld3_eff was not found

ld4_eff was not found

ld5_eff was not found

larm_eff was not found

motion_eff was not found

ok I found the solution.... none of the
vertices must be weighted at those bones...but into skin modifier you have to add those
bones in the envelope!!

11.) Vertex weighted to more than
four bones.

When I run Assimilate/Carcass, it
returns error messages indicating that such-and-such mesh has verts weighted to more than
four bones. It's really nice that Carcass gives me the exact vert number that is causing
the problem. The trouble is that I don't know how to find those specific verts in MAX.
Does anyone know how to do this? Is there a plug-in I should look for?

Verticie numbers are independent from max
and carcass. The easy way? Apply a "NONE" material to your object and check how
many bones are overlapping on an object. Usually common sense tells you they occur around
fingers (if you weight fingers without modifying them YOU WILL GET this error)

Actually the way to see which vert is
which, is to go into sub-object mode and start clicking on each vertex. Easy if you don't
have that many, very hard if you have allot. The vertex number will show up on the
right-hand toolbar when you click it - vertex number is not independent between carcass
and 3d studio.

12.) Mesh or Body Part out of
place.

Why is the right hand out of place? The
skeleton is not out of wack, I think. The verts on the hand are weighted without any
trouble. What's going on?

My simple model complied successfully
in assimilate! Wow I was so happy! But then the trouble came when I opened my glm in
modview, some of the parts appear to be misplaced, not in a weird way though, those parts
that are misplaced seem to have been mirrored off an axis, for example the r_arm appears
to be mirrored right below the left arm, and the l_leg has been diagonaly mirrored to the
top right, the entire torso was flipped over (in the right position but the neck was
facing down) and some of the smaller parts were just completely off some things like that.

I've weighted my model and assembled a
glm file, but when I load it into ModView, all the body parts are scattered around and
floating in mid-air. Does anybody know what I've might have done wrong here? Is this just
a weighting problem?

Hey, I am having a problem with a piece
of a model I made (well, it's vampire hunter d's model, but I got him in game) showing up
in the wrong place in modview and in the game. The left hand is detached, and waaaaaay
under the model. I have it weighted to the correct bone, and it looks like all the tags
for it are in the right place.

Yea its no big deal,your gonna have to
reweight and reheirarchy the hand though.

Create an object, attach out of place mesh
to newly created object, delete object faces, reweight and reheirarchy the hand and tags
that go with the hand.

Ok, try this. Select the hand, unlink it
from everything, go to the utilities tab, and select reset xforms. Then go to the stack
and right click on the xform in the stack and select collapse to. Find another part that
is working correctly, such as the left leg, the head, whatever, something not near the
hand, but which shows up correctly within modview, or the game. After this part has been
weighted, apply an Edit mesh modifier to it, Select Attach, and Attach the hand in
question. Now, it will be part of this other part (head, leg, whatever). Go into
sub-object/Polygon Mode, select the polys of the hand, and go to Detach. This should fix
any issues it had. You will need to re-link it to any bolts or other mesh parts (ie. link
it to the forearm, the rhand bolt, and such), and you will need to reweight the hand, but
it will fix the issue, in my experience.... Oh, and on the mesh part you used to fix this,
the one you attached then detached the hand from, you can remove the Edit Mesh modifier,
although it should not affect anything on its weightings or otherwise, since you will
technically not be removing or adding any verts from what were edited during the
skinning/weighting process.

Ok I know exactly how to fix that problem,
but it involves re-weighting the parts that don't work. Create any object, select the
object and attach a part of the model that shows up not where its supposed to be, then
select the polys of the part of your model that was screwed up and detach it. Then just
apply your unwrap and re-weight it. Do that with any part that's out of place. And to find
vertices that aren't weighted just select a bone and move the body in every direction and
look for the vertex that doesn't move with the rest of the body.

If you are using max, go to the Utilities
tab, and use the Reset XForm on the effected objects (or the entire mesh for that matter).
You may need to go back and re-weight everything, so make sure you save a backup. Careful
when you reset the xform though...first off, there might be a couple of faces you have to
flip the normals of (they'll turn black-ish), but if you reset the xform of an object
higher up in the heirarchy which has also been rotated before it was mirrored, lower
laying object will also rotate back. You'll know what I mean as soon as it happens to you.
Also, you can reset the xform at any point in the whole modeling process: just make sure
that the other modifiers are on top of the xform modifier in the stack, then right click
on the xform modifier and press "collapse to".

What's happening is that the bits which
are floating around still contain information about where they where before you scaled or
rotated them. To solve this, select the bodypart and reset the xform (in the utilities
tab...make sure you press the button in the roll-out too!). Then collapse the xform
modifier by right clicking on it in the stack and clicking on "collapse to" (NOT
collapse all).

Make sure you move the modifier down the
stack, do not leave it on top. If the skin modifier was applied, you'll have to redo the
whole weighting of the mesh. Also use collapse to and not collapse all. Oh and yes it is
because of the clone/mirror thing, dont ask me why!

some corrections: it's in the modifiers
and also utilities tab , plus you have to flip faces manually or select everything facing
the wrong way and hit the flip button (i forgot to mention that).

I fixed it. I just deleted that part and
remerged it from a previous save... strange.

Find another part of your model that shows
up correctly in modview - ie. the hips, or one of the legs - after all the weighting, etc
- and attach the errant part, such as the hand, to that mesh part via applying an Edit
Mesh to the Working Part first, then attaching the Non-Working part to it. Next, go into
the Sub Object mode, polygon, and Detach the part that you had attached. Finally, re-skin
that mesh piece, then link the parts together properly (caps, tags, etc).

so:

1)Apply edit mesh modifier to working part

2)Attach unworking part to working part

3)Detach unworking part from working part
via polygon sub-object mode

4)Re-skin and re-link formerly unworking
model part.

I got my model compiled to a GLM last
night, but everything is screwed up, body parts everywhere. what did i do wrong?

Could be that the bones have somehow been
rotated accidentally or otherwise or the origin angle, whatever you call it has been
rotated, the Pivot to fix it there are several solutions, all which need to be done

hm..well, I did rotate the legs, since
when you import the kyle model, they're sticking straight out

I don't think that would be it, but it
could be one reason but in the process of creating a model, the root pivot points for some
reason on the mesh itself never seem to line up correctly on the first try. I attempted
this when I made exar kun. I laid it out correctly, made it so that the model didn't skew,
etc, but for some reason parts were upside down, laid out incorrectly, etc. One way to fix
this would involve redoing the skeletal setup, but first, what you should do, to see if
the skeleton has had any odd transformations is to select the whole skeleton by double
clicking on the pelvis bone, then go to the third tab on the right hand side of the screen
in 3ds and select reset pivot. If any parts of the skeleton rotate back to some other
angle or otherwise you know something was wrong with the skeleton. If it skews your mesh
doing this, undo the reset and detach the specific model parts from that part of the
skeleton through their skin modifier. If nothing happens then its not the skeleton. Now,
try selecting the whole shot, all of the mesh parts and in that same tab menu, do Reset
Pivot, Transforms, and the other one. Only the mesh, no bones. Try doing this then export
again and see what changes.

ok, re-exported..no change from what I
can tell. One thing to note...the right leg is in the correct position, right below the
hips segment. The left leg is backward and right behind the right leg

Okay now I can tell you how to fix the
whole model with just that right leg. This will require redoing the whole model's skeletal
setup. Save for the bolts, but the bolts will have to be re-linked to the parts but this
is the quickest and easiest way that I know of to fix this issue. Select your right leg
mesh. On top of the Skin modifier, apply an Edit Mesh modifier. Next, go into Attach mode
for Edit Mesh and attach one specific part of the body that you choose which is a bit
aways from the leg so as to avoid overlapping polys. Lets say, you Attach the Left Arm so
now the Right Leg will encompass itself as well as the polys from the Left Arm. Go into
Sub Object mode, Polygon, and select all of the polys for the Left Arm and go to Detach.
This will reset the pivot point of the Left Arm to be the same as the Right Leg, which was
correct and it will now be a separate object. So you will want to link any parts back to
the left arm, such as the bolts. Wait though for the hand, as you will have to do the hand
like the Left Arm was done. Do this for the whole shot, and it should work out okay. This
was a trick i figured out on vader for inside-out polys, polys that were say upside down
and behind his head when it was supposed to be his hand, etc. This works every time so
long as the one model within modview looked like it lined up correctly.

Has anyone had any problems with their
models when they upgraded JK to 1.04 ? My model worked fine untill I updated, I would love
to release my model, and It is finished, but cannot do so due to the error. Here's a
screenie of the error..[the model is twisted and deformed]

Hmmmm...I would try this next if you think
it's a tag problem. Use Merge with the skeleton from Psych0's website and select only all
of the tags (anything that begins with bolt, and the Stupidtriangle_off). When prompted
what to do about the tags that already exist with the same name, choose to delete the old
geometry. Move all the new tags into their proper positions, using ONLY the move tool and
NOTHING else. Export it again and give it another go.

13.) Unable to find bone
"l_hand" referenced in this mesh"

I started doing some weighting of my
mesh and when I tried to assimilate I got this message. This is pretty weird since l_hand
isn't even a bone. Anybody know what I'm doing wrong?

I am finally finished with the
weighting of the vertices of my Padme model, have linked everything proper, set up all the
files paths right and now I get an error in Assimilate when it tries to build the GLM
file. It says that it cannot find the lhand_tag_bone (or lhand_bone_tag...i forgot). I
checked the Max model a ton of times and this bone is present and also linked to another
bone correct.

When I assimilate my model, it says
that it cannot find the cervical referenced in the mesh. That doesn't make sense because I
have the cervical weighted to the top of the torso and the neck area. What could be the
problem? How can I reference bones? Thanks

I figured it out. I accidentally weighted
a cap to the left hand mesh.

Ok try this, the
"lhand_tag_bone" should be added to the left hand's bone hierarchy BUT no vertex
assigned.

The "bolt_l_hand" tag is
weighted only to the mc5 bone.

For the right hand, the
"bolt_r_hand" is weighted only to the "rhang_tag_bone" and the
"rhang_tag_bone" is not part of any bone hierarchy.

PsykoSith's idea may work, but I have a
solution that works also, because the same thing happened to me. Don't weight the
lhand_tag bone to anything, just weight the lhand to the l_hand mesh. Then for the right
hand, weight the rhang_tag bone to the r_hand. Note that it is rhang, not rhand. Then
weight like normal and then complie it.

The lhand_tag_bone doesn't need to be
linked to any part of the mesh

In the humanoid.gla there's only the
r_hand_tag which is used so that's why assimilate show this error

have you accidentally unlinked any bones
at all?

When it usually says cant find bone it
means that some of the taboo bones have been weighted to the mesh, I know that the
left_hang_tag_bone cant be weighted to anything so I recommend removing those bones form
the list from any skin modifiers, replacing them with ones that are close enough and then
re-exporting and see if that works.

So some of these bones should NOT be
weighted to anything? If so are they all the _eff ones?

Ok that was the problem, i fixed all
the missing bones by doing some reweighting. But the spine_eff does not seem to be
weighted to anything and it still says its missing...

Ahh of course, its those hard to see
bolts, ill fix that up right now!

But when I run assimilate and try to
convert it to .glm, it gives me this error: lleg_eff and rleg_eff not found. What does
this mean? Am I doing something wrong here?

First you need to have original model, for
example that of the stormtrooper, saved as .max file. If so open your model and do merge
in the file menu. From the following list highlight these two things and click on select.
The two bolts will be added to your model. Find them (somewhere at the legs) bring them in
place, weight them and your problem is solved.

However you are missing one important
thing about those names: those are not tags, those are end effectors for bones.

I remember you were talking about deleting
bones from the skeleton. Assimilate does not like that, I learned that by deleting the
face bones one time with exar, and it did not bode well.

Try this.

1 Hide everything except the mesh.

2 Select the whole frickin mesh.

3 unhide the pelvis bone

4 Assign a skin modifier and add only the
pelvis bone.

5 Take the envelopes on both ends and wrap
that sucka around the whole mesh

6 Export away.

If assimilategives you no errors this
time, it is a weighting issue, and you need to find the problem or just re-weight the
WHOLE mesh. pain I know, but assimilate doesn't actually tell you the correct bones that
need reweighting.

If you did delete ANY bones at all
(excluding root.xsi skeleton) I would delete all bones and re-merge the root.xsi skeleton.

At first I had a problem exporting all
together. I realized my hips were rouged so I recollapsed them, under the Skin so I could
save my envelope maps. I also had 3 unweighted verts that I also weighted. Now my mesh is
completely weighted, with hierachy going Skin<UVW Unwrap<Editable Mesh for each
object (except for bolt/tags of course and bones). I have 10 surfaces, one of which we
could consider extra (like a Shoulder pad, it's an earpiece, it has no cap). I exported
and recieved the following:

I screamed. Oh yes I exported my
root.XSI to my dir and I added the humanoid.GLA in Assimilate. I tried compiling it this
way with a Kyle.xsi that was included with the SDK and it worked perfectly. I figured my
XSI exporter was broken so I used Right Hemisphere's 3D Exploration to view it. It seem
jumbled up??? I looked at the included root of Kyle and Stormtrooper XSIs, they didn't
even show up. I decided to try importing. The root of Kyle and stormtrooper imported
nicely (although strangely the torso was beneath the rest of the bones and mesh, and on
kyle, the feet were sticking out) But on attempts to import MY mesh didn't work
"IMPORT FAILED: Improper File Format". Now I also checked for more than 4 (4 OR
MORE or 5 and above?) bones having weights on a vert, and found only one place where it
could even rometely happen and fixed that, still the same error. I also (to save time)
when weighting, selected all the Tags/Bolts near the Hips and instead of doing them
individually, I applied a Skin modifier to the whole selection. Each has its own Skin
modifier but in italics - could this have something to do with it? I also removed the
earpiece and received the same error. Exporting the bones imported fine back into 3d Max R
4.2 Exporting and reimporting with the mesh and tags didn't work. Could it be the mesh?
I've also cloned feet and arms to save time having to remodel each individually, and never
bothered Resetting XForm. Could this be a problem? I did try however exporting and
reimporting the mesh with bones AND WITHOUT tags, and IT DID work, although the pieces
were I had mirrored came out flipped (normals flipped). Could this be a cause? I've also
included no LODs in this first attempt to compile, but I do have skinmaps and coordinates
on all meshes (the skin maps ranging from sizes 1024x1024 and lower). I'm stuck and I'd
really like to get this model on it's final stretch to exporting. If anyone asks, you can
have the .max file if I can trust you won't do anything brash with it...none the less any
help AT ALL is REALLY appreciated. I also like to note that this version of R4.2 has been
giving me many problems and I'm thinking of reverting to R4 Could this also be a cause?
Well max 4.2 is not the problem, that's what I used for my model and it worked fine. It
proved to be unstable using the skin modifier but i just check the ignore box and max wont
crash anymore.

Maybe the path you are using is too long,
or carcass is not finding the gla file, or the xsi exporter is not working right???

I got the improper file format when
trying to compile a XSI 2.0...

Create a dir on your root drive:
"c:\base\models\players. Next extract the humanoid.gla file into the \_humanoid dir
(use xtract with paths) and dont forget to copy the carcass.exe compiler into that dir. I
then installed the tools into the base dir (base\tools\) Then exporting leave the default
boxes checked. Add a reset Xform modifier (and sometimes 2 or 3) to each object with
inverted faces and then use "collapse to" NOT collapse all. Important: make sure
u move the reset xform down under the skin modifier or you will have to redo the skinning
for that object. Another thing, when u select any object, like the torso or the head, is
the pivot point at the same spot as "stupid triangle off"?

Flipped faces won't be reported as a bug
by carcass so its not the problem.

Ok now I'm really confused. I've
isolated the import/export problem to bolts. And I can import without bolts/tags. When I
try to import EVEN WITH ONE, i get an import error. Does Carcass support xsi vers 2? if it
does where can I get it? (a XSI 2.0 exporter). I haven't changed my directory but cause
counting its only 48 chars long, under what I assume 64-128 to be the max. Now the wierd
part, I exported it WITHOUT BOLTS, and it Compiles! Except for one error, on my part.

Now my question COULD THIS ERROR be the
reason WHY IT ISNT compiling correctly in the first place WITH bolts? apparently my XSI
exproter is broken howerver.. Im quite confused. BTW throughout this WHOLE PROCESS I NEVER
created ANY LODs nor did I set my pivot pt to that of stupidtriangleoff . I even had to
REMOVE the MODEL_ROOT. MODVIEW sees the compiled model WITH SURFACES and BONES. Skins is
missing because I have not made a Skin file but TAG SURFACES does not show up (and neither
do sequences for that matter, but it plays anyway, and the wookie model which i used for
back checking also didn't have sequences listed so i'm assuming that's ok). BTW err hehe
what does that error mean? I dont have 593 verts on my torso ... I have 288 but this is
above 250. Is that why im given a error?

I had this exact same problem, but when I
went back and optimised the model (like as in selecting vertices close together and weld
them) then I went and I did a weld all for .5 power on the whole model. It worked.
Therefore it was a problem with a vertex or 2. Try this out, hope it works.

Yes I had a vertex problem I fixed that.
but I found a bigger one, some tags read as "bolt_r_leg_calf " notice the large
space after calf yes for some reason while i was importing the tags spaces were included
and thus, the basis for ALLL my problems. I nearly shot myself when I realized this. I
searched threw numerous readmes for anything but found nothing. Oh and also having another
skin on top of a skin (or more than 3 modifiers?) bugs the XSI exporter as well..

There should be some notice on at least
the JK2 tools that SPACES IN ANYTHING will cause major problems.. but alas:0 Also, some
had a strange space after them, like a non character, also a massive problem to exporting
grr;\

16.) Your file contains cubic
scale keys

Well, here`s another strange error
message from assimilate: "Your file contains cubic scale keys".It is one
particular XSI-file i can not assimilate. It is possibel to assimilate other files. Does
anyone know what is wrong with my model?

Change your windows regional settings to
US...then it will work just fine. And change the keyboard too. If it still doesnt work, change your decimal character to a "period"
instead of a "coma" (in windows regional settings).

However, this doesn't seem to fix the problem for everyone. Apparently this can be fixed for XSI users by doing the following:

"I decided to search XSI help documentation using word "cubic", as a result I got a lot of articles and among them I found something interesting. It was "Export Crosswalk Options" and in that article there was information about animation resampling and types of interpolations which included FCurve Interpolation, Constant, Linear and Cubic. I thought that something like that could be in XSI export options. So I looked closely to XSI export options and found that they were more then I first saw, I just didn't scroll down. So I found there Animation Filtering, turned it on by checking 'Plot' and changed interpolation to Linear. Now it all works, and animation plays as it should."

If you are exporting from Max and also have the "export" animations box checked maybe it's what caused the problem for other max users too. Oddly enough switching keyboard to english while exporting from Max was the problem for me so it's a strange problem.

17.) Deformation Problems

I dont know wether the pelvis verts
should be binded to the pelvis bone (duh) or lower lumbar and split across the upper
femurXYs. I must realize she is wearing skintight such clothing, so when her stomach bobs
down it should curve like a "\" in a sense...

Your problem is that the verts on the
bottom of your torso object are weighted completely differently than those on the top of
your hips object. More technically, your problem is that you have two independant verts
from separate objects, with the same coordinates, but they're deforming in different ways.
Here's a way to fix this. First of all, all of the verts from the top of your hips should
be weighted EXACTLY the same way as those from the bottom of your torso. Now, say you want
the vert directly below the belly-button on your torso object to deform the same as the
vert on your hip object. Select that vertex while you're in the skin modifier rollout of
your hips object and see what bones are effecting it. You can do this by making sure that
under Filters, Vertices is checked. Now, with the vert selected, cycle through all the
bones that you've added to that object and look under weight properties. Any bone with an
Abs effect other than 0.0 is effecting your vert. Make note of these bones and add them to
the skin modifier for your hips. Now, scroll down to advance params and save your
envelopes for the object. Next, select your hips and get into the skin modifier. Under
Advance Params, select Load Envelopes. Highlight whatever you saved your torso envelopes
as and load it. Now, in the little pop-up box that you get, make sure that the bone order
in the Incoming Envelopes columns lines up horizontally to the order in your current
envelopes column. If not, you can add a "blank" for incoming bones that don't
effect that vert in your hips and you can delete objects that won't effect that vert in
your torso. Click "OK" and your two separate verts should deform exactly the
same. Hopefully this makes enough sense to get you on the right track. Things get a little
more complicated if you need to manually adjust the vertex weights individually, but a
flawless deformation is still possible. Keep playing with it and it'll all make sense
sooner or later. If not, just ask and I'd be more than willing to work with you on this.

I'm at a part in weighting where a gap
forms because I segmented a part on my model. Spacemonkeys tutorial says

"But what we are interested for
now is the ability to type in the Abs, effect. This is basically the weight that this bone
(the one you've got selected) has on the vert. I got around the gaping segments by
selecting the verts around the segments and weighting them 50/50 to the two different
bones they where being effected by."

I can select the verts, i just dont see
any place to weight them 50/50. If he means the Abs. Effect every time I select a vert and
put the number down to .50, assuming that means 50%, and click some other vert the number
goes back up to 1. Am I doing something wrong here? Oh and another question, when you
select a bone, for instance rhumerus, when you move it why does it affect the bone after
it, in this case rclavical? Its kind of confusing because when i want to see what a bone
does to my model i have to select the one before it...

i found that weighting it 50/50 didnt work
very well for my models as i still got gaping seams but i might have just been doing it
wrong, what i do is usually select the last few verts of the upper part (i.e. the hips
parts of the legs near the knees, the arms right before the elbow etc etc.) and completely
weight them to the bone below it. this keeps it together but can some times create ugly
deformations (like extra joints that shouldn't be humanly possible) if you model with the
bone setup in mind giving a few extra verts around the elbows and knees then the
deformation usually doesn't looks to bad.

it depends on the model i guess but if you
can get the 50/50 thing working correctly then i recommend that method because its what
the pros are using

I would check out the painting weights by
hand you can adjust the radius and strength of the painter. then by painting the verts in
question with one bone then going back with another bone till they reach a nice yellowish
color (i assume this would be 50% devotion the bone)

In looking at a load of max scripts that
play with skin weighting, what you really want is something that will read the weights for
a selection of verts and that apply those weights to a different set of verts that happen
to be very close to the world coords of the first set.

The point is that as far as organic
deformation is concerned, you should weight the top of your upper arm to mostly the
humerus and the bottom of your upper arm to humerusX. Otherwise your elbows and knees are
going to deform a little strangely. I'm not sure about how you would go about weighing it
for a robot. Oh yeah ... all the same holds true for the radius/radiusX too.

You do have to put a skin modifier on the
caps too. You can do like the tutorial says and just choose the nearest bone and
everything should come out okay. If you want, you could also just import envelopes from
the object being capped and that should do it too.

When I move the legs of the skeleton
the waist opens up. I have tried everything I know o weight it down properly... Can you
help me once more?

Double check your weights, it looks like
you have accidentally weighted the hips area to the femur bones. I try to have any parts
at seams, i.e. shoulders on either side from torso to arms, I try to have them all
weighted to the same bone. So, I would recommend at that point simply use the Pelvis bone
across that line of vertices with the Paint Weights function within the skin modifier. One
further word of advice: you can apply an edit mesh modifier to a mesh after the skin
modifier, meaning you can touch up some parts of the model if you choose to, after the
skin modifier. However, what you cannot do is weld or delete any verts as this will affect
the Skin modifier's weighting, and result in errors, meaning you will either have to
remove the edit mesh modifier or redo the weighting.

18.) Can't link to
stupidtriangle_off

Anyways, my problem is that once I've
linked everything up until the hips, and I wanna link the hips to stupidtriangle_off, it
won't let me and it says that it would cause a dependency loop. What did I do wrong and
how can I fix it? Thanks in advance.

linking isnt hard, you just goto
edit/select by name/ and select all the things your going to link.

I think the mesh root and model root are
located at 0,0,0 right below the model

Here's a neat tip that makes the linking
process MUCH easier: Link in the Schematic View. It is easier to pick each tag and mesh,
and it makes finding the stupidtriangle_off and the mesh root, etc much easier. It also
will make it so you can see what is causing that loop, perhaps making it so you can fix it
without starting over.

Actually, the best way to link stuff up is
by just pressing 'h'. Then you select all the elements you need, then hit the 'select'
button. Now you press the "link" button (to the right, on the toolbar, near the
undo/redo buttons) after which you press 'h' again. Then select the object you want to
link it to, and press the 'link' button (where 'select' used to be; remember, max is very
context sensitive. Done!

You might wanna try to place the
_humanoid.gla in your maw directory. When you add this humanoid.gla file and select to
build it it automatically looks up the root.xsi file that is in the same directory. If
that gla file is in the _humanoid directory then the root.xsi cannot be found. This worked
for me although Spacemonkey's tutorial says that you should put it in the _humanoid
directory.

21.) UVmap different meshes
together

say I want both the hand uvwmaps in the
same .jpg file, im not sure what the exact steps are to get them together if i attach them
together, map them and unwrap them together, then convert the map to .jpg, then do I
delete the uvwmap and unwrap modifiers and detach them and then what? unwrap them again or
something?

Ah nevermind, I figured it out. What I did
was map them separately, attach them together, unwrap them together and make a .jpg of
them, detach them and unwrap them separately again, so the maps aren't overlapping and
they can share a .jpg.

22.) Mesh is Missing

I have my newly made model I am trying
to bring into JK2, but when I export using the exporter in the JK2tools the mesh is
missing. I can reload it and all of the mesh parts are gone. What gives, am I doing
something wrong?

When you're exporting to .XSI you'll get a
little menu before it saves the file, make sure the little tick box that says Meshes is
ticked otherwise you'll just export the bones etc. Hopefully that was all that you did
wrong (ttrust me i did it a few times)

23.) no 'base' or 'development' in
C:\carcass\models\players\testguy\model.car

How do I fix this?

SetQdirFromPath: no 'base' or
'development' in C:\carcass\models\players\testguy\model.car

I've had this problem also. My solution
was to steal one of the .car files from the models supplied by raven, edit the file to
suit my own needs, and then run carcass manually from the command prompt. It's a huge pain
in the ass, but it's the best solution I could come up with. Hopefully someone else knows
what's up and how to get through this properly. Hope this helps.

24.) Model Doesn't Show Up In The
Game

Now I have all the correct files zipped
up, with the correct folders, and with it renamed to the pk3 extension. My icon shows up
in player setup, BUT MY MODEL DOESN'T SHOW UP IN THE GAME!!! I can see my icon blip from
my icon to the bespin model icon when the multiplayer game loads up, and my model ends up
being the bespin guy.

Duncan---I finally got my model to show
up. I am a retard! I copied over my images that had the correct sizing (128, 256, 512,
etc.). Also, the stupid skin files refer to tga images, though the images are actually
jpegs. It took me a while to notice that. After that, the model shows up now----what a
sense of satisfaction!

26.) Weighting the Fingers

I was wondering about the weighting of
the vertices in the hand. I read in Spacemonkey's tutorial that you cannot assign more
that 4 (or 5 I can't remeber the exact number) bones to a model. Now the hand in my Padme
model is 1 model that includes all the fingers and I believe this is the same in the Kyle
model too. How can you assign all of the available hand bones to the same hand model?
Because I think that the hand bones exceed the magical number 4 (or 5). Besides that do
actually you need to assign bones to the fingers? Since the player is always holding a
weapon maybe a hand model that has the fingers fixed in 1 position is sufficient.

You can have more than 4 bones assigned to
a model. You just cannot have more than 4 bones weighted to an individual vertices. So
although there may be 16 or so bones in the hand, as long as no vertices in your mesh are
affected by more than 4 of those, then it should be fine. I would recommend assigning the
fingers to the finger bones. The best way to do this is to manually weight the vertices to
the bones, otherwise you will have one fingers bones affecting another finger, and all
hell will break loose! Basically, I have the finger joint in my mesh positioned over the
joint in the bones, then I select all the verts for that particular joint, and assign them
to the bone on one side of the joint, weighting them at 0.5, then weight them to the bone
on the other side at 0.5. This way you should get a nice balance of movement on the joint.

What i usually do is add 100% influence to
every verts of the hand's mesh (from the wrist to finger tips) using the "lhand"
and "rhand" bone, this is a quick way to export the model. Then i go back to add
the finger weights.

27.) EXCEEDS MAX-QPATH

This has probably been posted before
but, every time I try to open a model in the glm format from ModVeiw I get an error
message saying ''EXCEEDS MAX-QPATH''

Is the folder path to your file greater
than 78 chars? This could be the problem. I had this problem with loading SP games, and
all I had to do to fix it was to delete the reactor.pk3, maybe that's the problem, hope
that helps, if not, good luck.

28.) Weighting is lost, Bones no
longer attached to mesh.

When I weigh a bunch of vertices to a
bone, save my file and reload it, I find that my weighting work has been for nothing as
the bones are no longer attached to the mesh. Is there a box somewhere I have to click to
rectify this? Perhaps nothing can be done about it?

Do u get an error from assimilate telling
u that there's weights missing from certain verts? If so.. then don't worry. I had a
problem with a specific part of my model that - although I had weighted it - each time I
loaded it I need to open the skin modifier and check the weights - otherwise assimilate
wouldn't allow me to build the model.

If your finding that MAx wont let you
weight your mesh properly to your bones - then you have a bad stack. Remove the skin
modifier, collapse the stack and then reapply it. That should work. Reset X form can also
work but may resize your mesh piece back to its originally created size - a problem if you
didn't build you model around the skeleton included in the root.xsi files.

29.) There was not a one to one
correspondence between texture vertices and true vertices. UV map may contain errors.

When I export my model to an .md3 from
gmax I get the error that goes something like this, "there was not a one to one
correspondence between texture vertices and true vertices. UV map may contain
errors." Now even after deleting all the uvmapping I did it still gave me that error.
At first I ignored it and put it into 3dsmax so I could use texporter and it was working
fine, the mapping was still there. When I used texporter a few of the parts of the model
didn't show up...

I've had this problem with exporting a Max
model for Q3. What I've done (and what worked) was:

- select all the vertices and weld them
with the standard minimal distance.

- then I applied the UVW Unwrap modifier
to all the vertices so that they are at least in the map

30.) .tga file is "fully
patched" and it should be "local patch" only

It says a certain .tga file I'm using
is "fully patched" and it should be "local patch" only.

I think this ones pretty ez to fix. copy
your tgas to your models' folder in jk2 (ex.
jk2/gamedata/base/models/players/yourmodelname) then go to your material editor in max and
change your materials' location to the new where you copied your images to
(jk2/gamedata/base/models/players/yourmodelname/youimage.tga). Make sure you have the
skins in the folder you want to export the .XSIs to. Make sure that the skins in the model
are linked to these.

32.) No parameter for -makeskel

33.) Error: Model has 2 surfaces,
but only 1 can be reached by recursing from surface 0 ('box01) | Model has 60 surfaces,
but only 1 can be reached by recursing from surface 0 ('stupidtriangle_off')

You need to re-hierarchy this model
correctly

You need to re-hierarchy this model
correctly, These are the surface(s) not reachable from Surface 0...

*r_arm_elbow

*r_arm_cap_torso

bla

bla

bla

Alright... this sounds like you haven't
linked your tags and such up... The way the model's hierarchy should be set up is in Tim
Appleby's tutorial that was included in the JO tools pack....if you know how to link the
parts together, and know about the hierarchy, then just go over it and make sure you
didn't link something incorrectly, or forgot to go through the stupidtriangle......

I don't know what's going on, I've done
everything exactly like in the tutorial. wtf is this error code ? Does a patch from raven
could fix this.

hmm, I sometimes get a similar error. When
I export with another exporter it works most of the time. Try some other .xsi exporters.
search for XSI at www.maxplugins.de

I had a very similar error as well it was
just after I tried to weld two vertices together. (I'm not that advanced at max so I'm not
sure if I welded it right) but luckily I didn't save it so i undid it and sorta cheat by
putting the 2 vertices very close together.

37.) Skeleton Disappears

I finally have my model linked,
weighted, etc, but upon exporting to XSI, my skeleton just totally disappears. This never
happened on previous exports, so I'm not sure what's up. Anyone run into this before?
Here's what happened:

1) Weighted, linked, textured model and
exported to XSI

2) Mesh was a bit messed up when
reimported (see my other thread on Xform), so I went back, broke the mesh hierarchy, reset
some Xforms and tweaked it.

3) Re-linked the hierarchy (according
to Spacemonkey's tute...like I had done b4) and re-exported to XSI

4) This time the model looked sweet,
but the skeleton totally vanished (not even in the selection list

Figured it out. The hierarchy of the
"skeleton root" was all by itself. It needed to have "model root" as
its parent:

38.) Vertex Weighting bug

I'm in the process of weighting
vertices to bones, and I'm having trouble assigning absolute values (using the ABS effect
spinner).

- I select a bone in the list
(cervical)

- I select a bunch of vertices (near
the neck)

- I set the abs effect (under weight
properties) to "0.5" and hit enter

- I have "rigid" and
"rigid handles" unchecked (although I DO have "normalize" checked)

- When I deselect the vertices and
click on them again, they all have weights of zero (not the "0.5" I assigned)

Yeah i get that sometimes, it looks like a
bug (well for me it looks like it). Try adding those verts to another bone, remove them
and go back to the original bone you want to weight. Or click add selected verts.
Sometimes i need to "get out" of the bone modifier. If the vert has no previous
weight assigned to it, it should turn red or have full abs. I always type 1.0 and then
select the parent bone, type 0.5 and get 50/50 weighting.

The problem of the ABS spinner graying
out happens quite a bit when I am trying to weigh tags (bolt_whatever) to a particular
bone. I select the verts, but then it doesn't let me type in any values (grayed out).

First make sure the "vertices"
option is checked in the "Filters" section, i usually uncheck envelopes and
cross sections. This always happens to me when I have selected many verts and I want to
modify the amount of abs, what you need to do, is to hold down ctrl and click only 1 vert,
the box wont be grayed out anymore. I have no idea why it's doing this...it's like some
kind of refresh you need to do every time you want to change the amount of abs. Same goes
when selecting verts, i have to rotate the view to make sure all the verts are selected
(the view port is refreshed and I can see the new additions I've made).

40.) Model file missing:

Hey man got a question. when I use the
assimilate program and I goto the add file and try to add the _humanoid.gla file it gives
me an error -Model file missing: "w:/Game/base/models/players/_humanoid/_humanoid.gla

Continue recieving this message so i
click yes and it looks like it loads so I push the B button to buld it and I get another
error -Model file missing: "w:/Game/base/models/players/_humanoid/_humanoid.gla
continue recieving this message- and so once again I click yes and notepad pops up with
this -Model: "_humanoid" Sequence

"_HUMANOID": ASE/XSI/GLA file
not found: "w:/Game/base/models/players/_humanoid/_humanoid.gla" (1 faults)-
what did i do wrong?

Typical error, all you have to do is click
on "new" so you have nothing in there... Once that's done go to >File then
>Add files, select the _humanoid.gla. Next time you click B, it should find the gla.
You have to do this every time you load assimilate, very annoying...

41.)...was going to perform a
boolean operation to attach a breast to the torso . . .Would this affect my model in
anyway . . .

Hi Im just working on my lastest
project and was going to perform a boolean operation to attach a breast to the torso...
Before attaching the geosphere breast I capped the holes in my mesh... Now this cut the
polycount from 1,300 to 869 to my amazement as I have never used the Cap Holes command
before. Now my question... Would this affect my model in anyway if I capped the holes
after finishing the entire mesh and would the poly count stay down because of this?

Just a thought... Its probably used out
there by all modelers apart from myself I stay away from booleans and cap holes, i prefer
to have full control over every vert/face. If your polycount was reduced this much, make
sure your object didnt turn into an editable POLY which is different than editable MESH.
Editable meshes make quads (faces) using tris (triangle) NOT in Editable POLY mode: a face
is only 1 quad (no edge dividing the face). I think you'll have to convert it to editable
mesh at some point or it wont be a valid mesh for JK2

42.)XSI Import failed, code = 4599

This error happened because the skin modifier is not on top, if you have set UV mapping coordinates on top of the skin modifier, move them down under the skin modifier. It is strongly recommended to UV map before you rig, collapse the stack so it's empty and then apply the skin modifier. ONLY the skin modifier should remain.